Trying To Be Lily
by MandyJane
Summary: I will always hope that maybe, just maybe, one day he will like me for myself. And then I can stop pretending to be Lily Evans.


**A/N - Hallo, my friends :) Well, if 'bitterness' was a genre choice, this would be the dictionary entry next to it. I'm not sure who this girl is, but I sure do feel sorry for her and hopefully you will too. Enjoy, from Mandy.**

Trying To Be Lily

Every morning I get up and I get dressed: just the uniform, exactly the same as her. I brush my hair until it shines and tie it back, half up and half down, just like her. Sometimes I put a ribbon in it as well, but it makes no difference. My roommates and I go to breakfast, and then it starts. Every day, just the same, wishing he would look at me like he does at her. Yearning for a smile, a word, or just to meet those glorious dark eyes for a moment and _hope _that he feels the same bubbly fizzy feeling that I get.

I know that she's beautiful, everyone does. I mean, she's head girl, her face is shoved in our minds all day from assemblies and meetings and just because she's so present. All the time it seems as if she's there. But still, no-one else can be spotted from miles away because their hair burns brighter than the candles above our heads, and no-one else has skin as smooth and creamy as milk, or eyes like the emeralds that count Slytherin house points. And certainly no-one else has half the school in love with them like she does.

Not that anyone could ever do anything about it: she's utterly besotted with that idiot head boy, James Potter. Yes, they make a striking couple, but can't she see the mistake she's making? How could anyone ever choose a bumbling prankster over _him? _Everyone always talks about 'clever Lily Evans', but if you ask me she's lacking some common sense.

But the fact that she doesn't pay him any mind does make my life a little easier in some ways. At lease I'm not pathetically heartsick over a boy who has a beautiful girlfriend. No, I'm in love with the boy who's in love with the most luminous girl in school. And she never even looks at him, just like he never looks at me.

Most people don't see him as I do – they look at his pale skin, long nose and dark hair and turn away from him. I don't know why. I heard a couple of girls call him scary, creepy, say that he made them shiver when he sat there scribbling away like that. They found him too intense, not glib and bright enough.

I wouldn't change him. Yes, he makes me shiver, but with delight when his hand brushes mine as he reaches for an ingredient. And oh, my knees actually feel weak when he speaks directly to me. I always thought that was just an affectation in novels before, but it isn't, and I love that I have felt it.

But he always watches her, and if he does speak to me it is in brief and curtly, as if I don't matter at all to him. But sometimes he smiles at me, if I make some witty comment about that band of idiots Potter goes around with. And then it's as if the sun has appeared in the room with us, and every second of that smile is worth the hours of doubt and worry I go through when he ignores me.

So I keep trying, over and over. I watch Lily Evans' every move, and imitate her. My hair was dull brown, but I found a spell to give it auburn highlights. Against my green uniform it almost looks red sometimes. I try to sparkle and draw people to me like she does, I learn to excel in Potions and Charms like she does, I even try to become her friend. And she is perfectly polite, perfectly poised, perfectly lovely…and she walks away with her perfect friends after offering up some trite comment about the next visit to Hogsmeade that she never follows up on.

He saw. He sees everything she does. So instead of hexing her like she deserves, for her casual cruelty and vicious, slippery perfection, I go on pretending. And in the library the next day, instead of silently hunching over our work like we usually do, he speaks directly to me, and we chat and laugh. And yes, perhaps he is just taking pity on me because I too have been rejected by the leading light of the school and her oleander-sweet words, but I can deal with that. Because maybe, just maybe, one day he will like me for myself. And then I can stop pretending to be Lily Evans.


End file.
